By Hannah Sivak, phD
Biochemist
Skin Actives Scientific LLC

A preservative by any other name (or no name)....


True for roses, but what applies to roses does not necessarily apply to skin care. In a battle that involves pressure groups, environmental politics, fear and marketing, the first casualty is science.

A prospective client wrote to me demanding to know why we at Skin Actives Scientific continue to use preservatives in our products when she has been doing so well with products that contain no preservatives whatsoever. My answer: those products do contain preservatives. How come she does not know what I do?

There are at least three ways to hide preservatives from consumers:

Hide in plain sight: the preservatives in the formulation are presented as emollients, or skin tighteners, or essential oils, or anything else but what they are: preservatives. This is possible for ingredients that are not well known.

Confuse the consumer:  the preservatives are not explicitly included in the list, but are included (and unmentioned) in the “natural” extracts. For example, if liquorice root is extracted with a solution made of water, propylene glycol and preservatives such as parabens, all that needs to appear in the ingredient list for the final product is “liquorice extract”. Moreover, if the plant was grown without synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides, the extract (which is mostly water, propylene glycol and preservatives) can appear on the label as “organic liquorice extract”. If plant extracts are a good part of the product, no further preservatives will be needed, because the concentration of preservatives contributed by the “extracts” to the final product will be enough for safe preservation.

Lie: a company adds preservatives and simply lies about the formula (yes, it happens). Unless somebody sends the product to an analytical laboratory to be tested (at a cost of several hundred dollars) nobody will be any wiser.

In short, preservatives, i.e. chemicals added to the formula with the purpose of killing or delaying growth of bacteria and mold are always present in any formula, whatever the label may say. Notable exception: products completely free of water, because microorganisms need water to grow and divide (our alpha/beta exfoliator contains no water and no preservatives).